A research team led by Professor Juho Kim from the School of Computing proposed an interactive system that encourages its users to express and explore diverse perspectives on social issues online. The system, called StarryThoughts, aims to present the diversity of opinions and the contexts behind these opinions by interpolating them on a two-dimensional space following the metaphor of “a starry night”.

An essential quality that defines a democratic society is the free and equal exchange of opinions between its members on social and political matters. In theory, the widespread use of online platforms should only facilitate this ideal by connecting people of different backgrounds and beliefs. In practice, however, the current designs and algorithms deployed by online spaces become a systematic cause of political polarization. By filtering content based on the analysis of a user’s preferences, these online spaces promote isolated congregations of like-minded groups and create so-called “filter bubbles”, thereby preventing a user from assessing a certain issue from various perspectives and amplifying intolerance towards different opinions.

To tackle this issue, researchers from KIXLAB developed StarryThoughts, a visual platform that users can freely navigate to explore various stances and the relationship between opinions and demographic identities of opinion holders. Each opinion is displayed as a dot in a two-dimensional space arranged according to the stance taken on a certain issue, from “Strongly Opposing” to “Strongly Supporting”. For each opinion, the system presents the demographic information of the author, enabling the user to perceive the diversity of experiences that influenced the author’s stance. Users can also filter opinions by entering demographic information, such as age or gender, into the system and make predictions regarding which group is most likely to support or resist a certain agenda. Finally, the system encourages users to explore a broader range of opinions by recommending opinions with the least semantic similarities.

Findings from the user study suggest that identity factors can be a meaningful cue for developing understanding and respect towards different beliefs. With StarryThoughts, researchers envision an online space with respect and openness towards diverse opinions at its core. The full version of the research paper can be found here.